Tasmania is the cradle to some of mother nature’s tallest and oldest trees – and to a logging trade determined to turn them into wood chip. The battle was, still is and will be intense.
TASMANIAN FORESTRY FACTS
• An average of 20,000 hectares of native forest are clearfelled and burned in Tasmania every year.
• 80,000 hectares of native forest have been converted to non-native plantations in the last seven years.
• Tasmania exports more woodchips than every other state in Australia combined; it is the only state that clears and woodchips native rainforest.
• An estimated 90% of wood taken from native forests on public land become woodchips, for export mainly to Japan. No more than 4% become sawn timber.
• In 2003, 14,600 hectares of native forest was clearfelled and burned. Only 6180 hectares – just over 40% – were replanted with native trees. The rest became fast-growing plantations or were converted to ‘non-forest use’.
• The rate of logging in Tasmania has quadrupled over the last decade. Logging companies’ profits, too, have steadily increased. Logging jobs, meanwhile, have declined. Five thousand jobs have been lost in the last 25 years, as the industry has mechanised and ‘downsized.’
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